Ireland’s Voters Ready to Confront Rest of Euro Zone!

Source: http://dailybail.com/slideshows/irish-bank-protest/

• The Irish people should just tell the banksters and their politician puppets to have a colonoscopy on themselves. Iceland which voted ‘Hell No!’ against the banksters is already experiencing economic recovery. (See: What Ireland can learn from Iceland’s economic recovery!).
   
• The Irish have a choice: debt enslavement for them, their children, children’s children …. or ‘No thank you! We Irish people have survived as a sovereign nation for umpteenth generations without the EU!‘ You either kick the banksters’ asses or your children will lick their asses forever! The reality is: Ireland is going to default sooner or later so why give your country to banksters who are screwing you?
    
  Ireland’s Voters Ready to Confront Rest of Euro Zone
  Whenever it happens, Ireland’s general election will mark the first clash between the desires of voters in a euro-zone nation that is in receipt of help from its brethren, and the declared interests of the currency area as a whole.
   
  At the heart of that conflict will be a blanket guarantee made by the outgoing government to pay back international holders of all bonds issued by Irish banks should they fail.
   
  Most Irish voters blame the banks for their nation’s spectacular fall from economic grace in recent years. While bankers are hardly the most popular people in most post-crisis democracies, in Ireland they are viewed in an even less favorable light, and stand accused of something bordering on economic treason.
    
  The architect of the 2008 guarantee to holders of the banks’ bonds—Finance Minister Brian Lenihan—says it was the only way to prevent even greater damage to the economy, since a default on the banks’ debts would have done irreparable damage to Ireland’s reputation among foreign investors, including the many U.S. companies that have chosen Ireland as their European manufacturing hub.
   
  An independent report by Central Bank of Ireland Governor Patrick Honohan published last June found “no evidence” that political favors or corruption played a part in the rapid growth and sudden collapse of Ireland’s banking system. But voters don’t seem convinced. Instead, they view the guarantee as a deal between the government and its friends in the banks, struck at the expense of the taxpayers. It’s worth noting that the crisis that finally led to the government’s breakup Sunday was triggered by revelations that Prime Minister Brian Cowen had played golf with a leading banker a few months before the guarantee was announced.
   
  Fianna Fail’s association with the bank guarantee is the key reason for its weak showing in recent opinion polls. Without some Lazarus-like revival in the weeks ahead, the party that has dominated Irish politics for eight decades is heading for its worst-ever showing in a general election.
   
  Opinion polls suggest most voters would like to drop the guarantee and reschedule or default on the bank debt. And Labour and Fine Gael, the parties that hope to form the next government, will have to address the deep anger that has led to the astonishing collapse in support for Fianna Fail.
   
  They have already been critical of the bond guarantees and made it clear they want to renegotiate the terms of the bailout package. “Another major area for discussion must be the extent of burden sharing between taxpayers and bank bondholders,” Joan Burton, the Labour Party’s chief spokesperson on the economy, said in a speech last week.
   
  “Chancellor [Angela] Merkel made the common-sense observation that investors who take a risk should not be given complete cover by sovereign governments. However, her approach seems to be that of St. Augustine: ‘make me chaste, but not yet.’ She and other EU leaders have not yet accepted that part of the solution to the current banking and economic crises, never mind the next one, is appropriate burden-sharing between taxpayers and investors.”
   
  Nonetheless, both Labour and Fine Gael have acknowledged that in renegotiating the bailout there is a constraint: what the rest of the euro zone wants from Ireland in return for its loans. And what it wants is for the banks’ debts to be honored in order to protect the soundness of their own financial institutions. They fear any restructuring of the bonds would spook investors and prompt them to withdraw their money from other banks around the bloc.

Source: http://dailybail.com/slideshows/irish-bank-protest/

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